


Ingrained

by ForDarkIsTheSuede (TheBadgeringWitness)



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst, Based on a Tumblr Post, Gen, Post-Finale, hope you're ready for heartbreak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 03:00:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6498187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBadgeringWitness/pseuds/ForDarkIsTheSuede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stanley Pines can't remember anything before he wakes up for the first time. The person known as "Stanley Pines" is gone. What remains is a functioning shell of a human with no memories, no experiences, no personality... </p><p>But within him, at the far corners of his mind, are pieces of something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ingrained

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote this based off of my theory on my tumblr: http://fordarkisthesuede.tumblr.com/post/139432186396/okay-so-something-bothered-me-about-the-finale
> 
> You don't have to read it to get what I'm saying in this story, but it sheds some light on it. Oh, and GF fandom - this is for you: ( *¯ ³¯*)⊃～♡

Thanks to Mabel, his memories start to return, they think. But it’s not quite that. He is told stories of adventures both great and small and clings to them like paper on glue. He has nothing else but the stories his niece and nephew (who called themselves “Mabel” and “Dipper”) tell him that go along with colorful, cheerful photographs; he knows of little else. He’s still not sure how to act around everyone or respond to most things, but he grows quickly fond the twin children that are so patient and loving and oddly reminiscent of him in a way he doesn’t understand. He enjoys the company of the young man named “Soos” who fills in the gaps of the twins stories with silly little details of Stan, like what he was wearing or what exact words he said at the time. He likes the red-headed teen “Wendy” who jokes about everything and fills in the grimier bits of stories. “Ford”, his brother, was a little odd at first, but so supportive and racked with guilt and pain over something unsaid that Stanley couldn’t help but feel sorry for him and decided to trust him like the kids did. Maybe part of why Ford felt strange to Stanley was because it felt _weird_ to look at the guy, though he couldn’t think of the reason behind this.

Ford tells him things, too, about their paternal family and their childhood home, but with only one picture to go along with it, it might as well have been a fairytale. Stanley can’t remember any people before the summer started, and even then it’s only because the townspeople and the twins tell him all about themselves to try and jog his memory. He wasn’t even sure how old he was until Ford told him late one evening - far away from the rest of the group, Stan noticed - and even _then_ it felt wrong to pin a number to his identity. It was like trying to put a color to him – just one didn’t feel right.

But he felt comfortable with all these people, even if he doesn’t remember who they are _exactly_ or understand how he knew them ages ago if he couldn’t remember anything before waking up in a sunny forest.

He’s not sure where everything else comes from, either. Why can he make such clever comebacks – the kind that make his family grin at him, teary-eyed as if he were accomplishing something great? Why does he like the snappy “Mr. Mystery” suit so much, as if it were a trophy he wore as a second skin? Why does he enjoy being the center of attention if he doesn’t _remember_ anything?

Why does he feel so _odd_ , as if he’s missing some bigger picture?

Looking in a mirror for the first time felt… _trippy_. It was the only way he could put it, but he didn’t understand the meaning of the word. Ford was truly his double, and it felt so unworldly to stand in front of a piece of glass and see himself in a walking human body with a real face and two eyes and ears and everything. Stanley wasn’t sure why _that_ was, either, since he watched his legs and arms move in fascination when he first started walking around. He guessed it was because he didn’t expect to be Ford’s twin. He didn’t know _what_ he expected.

Stanley didn’t expect the explanation for why he was even _there_ , either. Apparently he had saved the world by letting his mind be erased by a “memory gun”. Something about that _bugged_ him, but he wasn’t quite sure what it was that tipped him off to the notion that something wasn’t right. He tried not to think on it too hard, but was difficult when he was left alone with his own thoughts. Especially at night, when he had to sleep.

He felt weird, having to close his eyes and try to stop thinking because otherwise his body would collapse from exhaustion, but he did it anyway if only to make the others feel better. His dreams for the first few days were usually nonsense, just cobbled together memories of stories he had been told with weird voices that’s he’d never heard before in place of narration over moving pictures, but sometimes, usually after he woke up in the middle of the night and fell back asleep after a while, he would dream of the kids and the Shack and the ocean and watch as his imagination made new scenarios about them.

And he dreamt of a pyramid once, on his third day. It was one he’d seen in a photo from the Shack, but if felt like he was really there, floating over the sand and watching the stars as three large pyramids loomed ahead, looking as if they were built yesterday. He mentioned it briefly at breakfast the next morning and didn’t understand why everyone looked so freaked out and told him it was best to forget about anything related to pyramids.

He was curious, but the people he had come to know as ‘family’ looked disturbed, so he decided not to press the issue. Instead, he filed the subject away as something to keep to himself. Stanley wanted to know more about the place called “Egypt” that was shown in the photo next to the mummy in the cracked glass case on the patched-up showroom floor, but it had _pyramids_ in the background so he kept his trap shut. “Egypt” looked beautiful, with its rolling dunes and clear sky, and he could almost feel the cool night air on him again as he looked at the sepia-colored photograph.

As the next two days went on, he dreamt of floating through space, of weird beings in different shapes and sizes that spoke in a strange language he somehow was able to comprehend, and of bizarre landscapes that to anyone else would be called hideous. Stanley woke up feeling weird after every one, not understanding how he could imagine such things and yet understanding everything that had gone on.

He felt even weirder the day he managed to open the safe that had supposedly always been in his room. He didn’t know the code to the safe, but after over an hour of punching in random numbers, the door clicked and he delved in, curious as to what he could’ve possibly wanted to save or hide away.

He found a stack of birth certificates, all with names he had been told were his previous fake identities from years ago, a little folder that had some photographs (some of people he didn’t recognize and some were the twins with either Soos or Wendy), the deed to the Shack, a nice wad of cash, and on top of it all a pile of paper that looked like part of a photocopied book titled “Journal 1”.

Stanley spent half that night reading through it, learning more about the town and some of the creatures his family had described to him in their stories. The weird feeling that had been growing steadily in his head as he read increased tenfold when he realized halfway through reading a page about fairies that he could understand _everything_ laid before him, every word or scribble or symbol that the author, Stanford Pines, had felt the need to write down. Stanley flipped through various pages, trying to find something, _anything_ , that he couldn’t read:  English, Latin, Binary, mathematic equations, and things written in varying forms of cryptography all came naturally, as if he had understood them all for years, maybe decades.

But he felt as if he wasn’t _meant_ to understand. Like he shouldn’t be able to read _anything_ , let alone comprehend what “klqefkd ql pbb ebob” meant without having to figure out what cipher the author was using.

Needless to say he didn’t get much sleep that night. No matter what, his mind kept going back to the idea that he shouldn’t be able to understand so much. It kept dashing around his head, like it was an important thing on two very fast legs that kept sticking out its tongue at him and giggling as it ran away when Stanley got too close. He managed to drift off and had a short dream where he was scribbling something nonsensical on paper with one of Mabel’s sparkly crayons as they sat around the table in the den. Somehow he was able to read it, and when he spoke the words aloud in a tongue he didn’t know he knew, Dipper and Mabel just laughed and told him not to worry. Ford told him things would be just fine.

Stanley wanted so badly to wake up and walk into the kitchen to see the kids eating breakfast with his brother that morning, but he recalled the second he opened his eyes that Dipper and Mabel were now at home in Piedmont.

Ford was as cheerful as he usually was when Stanley came downstairs to breakfast, but after looking at his brother for a moment, Ford’s expression fell and he promptly put the coffee pot down.

“Stanley? Are you alright? What’s wrong?”                 

“Ford, I, uh… I don’t really know how to say this,” he managed to croak out.

Ford offered him a comforting smile and a gentle reassuring squeeze on his shoulder. “It’s okay, Stanley, I’m here for you. Take your time.”

“I got the safe open last night. There was some stuff in there, like those ID’s the kids told me about, but there was something else. They said you had written journals years ago, right?”

Ford nodded, looking a little concerned.

“Well, I sorta found one of them.”

Ford’s eyes lit up, a combination of excitement and dread and intrigue. “You did? In the safe?”

“Yeah. I just… I just don’t...” he felt his eyes water, but he didn’t know why. “I don’t _understand_.”

They sat down at the scrubbed kitchen table, Ford pouring a second mug of coffee for him as thoughts and feelings whirled around his head while his voice shook. “I read them, the pages, and… I _understood_ it.”

“Well I should hope so,” Ford gave a small chuckle, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes; he was clearly trying to lighten the mood. “My A’s in English weren’t for nothing.”

Stan blinked through more tears (how did he know what they were called, now?). “That’s not what I _meant_ , Brainiac,” he said in a less wobbly voice, not taking the time to worry about where the nickname suddenly came from. “I understood _everything_ you wrote. Every last word.”

Frustration, long pent up from many things, seemed to make his voice stronger now that he was getting everything out in words, and now spoken louder than before. “How am I able to do that, Stanford? How can I read all of that when _I don’t have any memories?!_ ”

He didn’t know why the words tumbled out of his mouth like they were written in there yesterday. He couldn’t understand when he had made the connection or why he couldn’t think of it last night. He knew he looked surprised at himself.

Ford looked so dejected at his choice of words that Stan felt his heart lurch in his chest. “Stanley, you’re memories are still coming back. You could remember Waddles’ name when you supposedly hadn’t seen him before - I’m not surprised you can still remember how to read.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense!” Stanley shouted over the table. “How can I understand the Latin and the secret codes you had written down when I don’t even remember _learning_ them?”

“That’s simple,” Ford explained with a patient lecture-y tone, “it’s another latent memory. You read the journal before, probably countless times while I was in the portal. You had 30 years to decode what I wrote, and I don’t doubt that you figured it out and memorized a lot of it, if not the whole thing. Heck, you probably remember what I wrote in there better than I do.”

Stanley wasn’t sure what to say, but he felt some relief nonetheless.

Ford seemed to have noticed the shift in Stanley’s mood, because he changed the subject like he often did after a darker conversation. “Now, what do you say we make some pancakes before we say goodbye to Soos? I think he and his _abuelita_ would like one final Stan-made short-stack before we head out.”

As the pair bustled around the kitchen to prepare breakfast before Soos and his grandmother arrived, Stanley’s mind wandered off to what his brother had said. Maybe Ford was right. Maybe everything that came naturally to Stan - whether it be a foreign language or a previously unthought-of nickname - were latent memories rearing their heads. Sure, he had difficulty recalling the time he punched a pterodactyl in the face, but with Mabel and Dipper’s storytelling he could almost feel the reptilian skin on his fist and the sweat on his brow, and hearing about the experience in such detail was almost like remembering it, anyway. Perhaps, just like Waddles, he would have to see the pterodactyl to really remember it.

 _But I couldn’t remember Dipper and Mabel’s names when I first saw them, either,_ a voice in his head muttered.

Maybe things like that were too powerful to be remembered so fast. Waddles was such a minor influence on his life, like the daily tasks of pulling out a chair to sit down or putting on his tie.

Maybe some things like his clever comebacks and love of dramatic effects and patented leather shoes were just ingrained in his personality, wherever _that_ came from – probably the far corners of his head, buried under something else he couldn’t remember.

Later that morning, it felt almost cathartic for Stanley to know he was leaving the Shack behind for a while. It had become a home to him, made with fresh memories of the past week with the family he loved, but when he was alone it was also a prison of memories he might never be able to recall. He was looking forward to spending more time with his brother as they adventured across the country and on the high seas, far away from homes or prisons or constant reminders of his failure to connect the dots.

The Stan twins piled into the beaten up el diablo with as many stuffed dufflebags and boxes as they could manage after a heartfelt goodbye to Soos (who couldn’t stop crying) and a newly-arrived Wendy (who told him that he’d better make it back by spring or she’d track him down and drag him back by freshly-broken legs) and a warm hug to both of them and Soos’ _abuelita_.

As Stanford started the ignition, he turned to his brother with a smile. “So Stanley, you ready to go on a new adventure?”

“You know it, Sixer,” Stanley grinned back. He waved back to the group on the porch as they began to roll out of the dirt driveway. Something about the way they smiled and waved made Stanley want to cry a little, but he knew he didn’t have to. It wasn’t a final goodbye, after all.

“We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when,” he sang quietly as he watched the group on the porch and the Shack start to shrink a little in the distance, “but I know -”

He turned to look out the windshield instead, focusing on the tree line ahead as he continued to sing to a melody otherwise unknown to him:  “We’ll meet again, on some sunny day…”

It was only when he finished his last note that he saw that Ford was looking unusually tense. “What’s wrong, Sixer?”

“I…just didn’t know you _knew_ that one.”

Funny, neither did he. He knew lots of things, just as he didn’t understand lots of others. Stanley figured he had at least a couple years to figure everything out.

“Guess you just can’t forget a classic, huh, smart guy?”


End file.
